McGathering 2, Electric Boogaloo

so, i just added “mcgathering” to browser’s dictionary, but no “boogaloo”…

…i figure the former will get used more than the latter.

today we trekked out to my cousin’s in mcgregor for our second annual holiday thing. when we were little kids (and most of the attendees yesterday were alive and/or on our radar) we did xmas together. but then my folks got divorced, and around the same time uncle arthur met aunt david. while my grandfather reluctantly had lifted his “no gays in my house rule” for uncle arthur since his oldest boy (my dad) had married arthur’s sister (my mom) aunt david was NOT related to the family (still isn’t to my knowledge, don’t know why they didn’t make it legal) so he wasn’t allowed in the house. david’s banishment begat arthur’s walk-out, which led to that whole part of my family just doing their own thing like they had previously, which is when the lasagna tradition came back.

and i had two xmas’s, neither of which was with my cousins, so we kinda grew apart.

we had done family shit since, but it was hit or miss and very sporadic. i’m talking three times in the last twenty years kind of sporadic. last year was the first time todd (my cousin) and his family had a proper house in quite a while and it was “centrally located” (i.e. two hours and some change from both dallas and us) so we did it up last year with all the kids (minus ours since he was in colorado) and had such a good time we decided to make it an annual thing, but this year os could make it.

since we’re almost all mccauley’s, but two of my cousins were from a second message so they’re mcculuck’s, and we get together in mcgregor, i came up with the name “mcgathering” and it kind of stuck. it’s fun. it’s us. and this year, i made koozies: